Saturday, June 24, 2006

While at BBN, I sometimes worked with the Cougaar team to explore distributed system design as it related to complex logistics problems. Since Hurricane Katrina, I've often wondered if Cougaar could be used to model disaster response in a real-time context. As a CAP responder, I also think about the use of computers to improve search & rescue activity.

Now along comes this ACM TechNews article, referencing Prof. Keith Decker's work on loosely coupled distributed autonomous systems. See also the Univ. of Delaware press release. I'm very glad to see that Prof. Decker is specifically working to improve the ability of organizations to adapt their plans successfully to real-time events (such as Katrina) and constraints (e.g., bureaucracy and physical limitations).